The amount of dividends paid worldwide in the first quarter increased by 12% over one year to reach a new record, thanks in particular to large exceptional payments from automotive groups, according to a study published on Wednesday. Payouts to shareholders amounted to $326.7 billion between January and March, after already a record in 2022, driven by banks, oil producers and automakers, which offset lower profits for mining groups .
Exceptional dividend payouts reached $28.8 billion in the first quarter, “their second highest level ever” (after the first quarter of 2014), according to asset manager Janus Henderson’s report. “Ford and Volkswagen accounted for almost a third of the extraordinary dividends” of the first three months of the year and “the dividends paid by the automotive sector were ten times greater” than last year, notes the press release from Janus Henderson.
“Volkswagen caused a stir in the first quarter, paying out an extraordinary dividend of $6.3 billion with proceeds from Porsche’s IPO late last year,” the report added. For Ben Lofthouse, head of Janus Henderson’s global equity team, the momentum of rising dividends “is all the more impressive given that 2022 has been a difficult year for the global economy with high inflation, rising interest, conflicts and the maintenance of certain confinements in the face of Covid-19”.
In France, it was the luxury groups Hermès and Kering that contributed to bringing growth in dividends, excluding exceptional items, to 11.6%, with 2.8 billion euros, out of a total of 3 billion dollars paid by French companies, far from a record, during a usually quiet quarter in terms of dividends. The first-quarter dividend champion was Danish shipping group Moller Maersk, which distributed $11.7 billion, ‘just over half of which was in the form of an extraordinary dividend’, reflecting record net profit recorded in 2022, thanks to the increase in container freight prices.
For 2023 as a whole, Janus Henderson is revising its forecast upwards and “now expects global dividends to be $1.64 trillion, equivalent to global growth of 5.2%.” Another way to remunerate shareholders, share buybacks also reached a record in 2022.
